


Paradox Theory

by Scarleystars



Category: Maddigan's Fantasia, Maddigan's Quest
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fix-It-Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 06:37:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/808442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scarleystars/pseuds/Scarleystars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jewel grows up. She grows up and dreams of a girl in circus clothes with fiery red hair. She grows up with her two brothers and her mother and father and wonders. Jewel grows up and uses her magic to fix everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paradox Theory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Telenovela](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telenovela/gifts).



> Mahy's a bit sketchy on all the future stuff, so after finally rediscovering Maddigan's Quest all thanks to a dear friend, I started this. 
> 
> All spelling mistakes _should_ be on purpose as language progression from the 100 years between the events of Maddigan's Quest and the future where Jewel and the boys live.

When Jewel was five she found the diary. Even then she knew this was something her scientist parents just would not understand.  They spent a lot of time tailoring her education to her ‘ _parametis_ ’ -they called it that when they discovered their children were calling it _magic_ , and had launched into a longwinded lecture about how science could explain _everything_ , including Eden and Jewel’s powers- so seeing the a book she had never read before, she immediately practiced her ‘telekinesis’ to remove it from its hiding place atop Timon’s wardrobe.  
It was a blessing that it was Eden who found her trying to understand the ancient cursive without any success. It was the difference between a gentle scolding as the book was taken off her, and having it snatched away as an angry silence descended, making her want to cry and tell her princely big brother that she was sorry.

Eden just hustled her off to bed and hid the book again whilst she was cleaning her teeth with the sonics.

Her dreams had always been weird and wonderful, but after that they became sharper: she would be fighting through silver fog, and always, the aim would be to warn someone. She wouldn’t find the diary again for a long time.

* * *

 

Xolis, it was predicted by the archivists and librarians, had become the closest to the land it had been before the Chaos, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t learnt from the mistakes of the past.

 

* * *

When she was twelve Eden and Timon took her to the circus. She went on and on about to their parents about how all her friends had gone, and the next day her brothers collected her from school for a surprise. At the tent door Timon had paused. “Are you sure you want to do this?” Eden has asked, 

“We can’t turn back now.” Timon had replied. “Jewel wants to see the circus, don’t you?”  
At the time she’d just nodded vigorously even being outside the big top felt strangely right, like a home away from home. She knew they felt it too, from the sighs they uttered as the performance started. Like this was where they should be. But later when it was all over, she realised there had been a certain melancholia to her brothers. Like it was dredging bittersweet memories to the surface. As her mom was tucking her into bed she asked her if Timon or Eden had been to the circus before, still trying to understand those strange emotions, only for her mom to laugh.  
“Oh no Jewel, no no, the circus comes to Xolis septannually, that is to say, every seven years. Your father and I don’t care much for theatrics, and your brothers were too young to go without an adult last time it was here….”

 _Then why,_ pondered Jewel sleepily _did they seem to know how every trick was done? And why were they scanning the performers faces like they expected to see someone they half-recognised?_  

 

* * *

At fourteen the dream fog was thinner and through it she could see the vague figure of another girl, with hair as red as fire. It was around the same time that she started becoming aware of her brothers as something other than occasional playmates. Eden, at the age of twenty-five was moving in with his girlfriend, -a lovely brunette called Hester who was just as slender and androgynous as he. Together they looked like a pair of vaeries out of the storybooks: all slender pale skin, with wiry hair and wild eyes. Their father was delighted, and took an entire day out of his engineering schedule to help them move in. Jewel was sad that both her brothers were now entirely gone from the house, but in return her mother spent the whole afternoon telling her stories of her brothers when they were her age.

“-And of course puberty hit Timon especially hard! It was like he became a man overnight. One day he just woke up and he was years older than he was the day before, much more mature. And from that day on he and Eden were closer -all three of you actually. You were only a few years old and they must have made a secret pact or something, because the next few days we could hardly get them to put you down, they would offer to play feed you, or change your nappies all the time! It was like they had finally accepted you as their sister and were suddenly afraid you would disappear. I don’t know what biological imperative must have clicked, but it was lovely to see all three of you together all the time. And now you’re all growing up so fast….”

 

* * *

Whenever she wanted to be on her own without being _alone_ , she went to visit her eldest brother. There was something quietly sad about him in his great big house surrounded by the books he’d written on everything from _The Peculiarities of Time Trave_ l, to _Life In Shining Solis: how Xolis was powered by Solar Converter_. Apparently he was really good or something, because he’d made enough money to give her the most expensive presents for her birthdays and everything. He was in the middle of writing another one when she arrived: _The Fantazhi_ or whatever. She sneaked a glance at one of the sheets of paper detailing a circus girl in sparkly clothes. “You should call her Garland,” she told him offhand, only to watch him freeze.

“What did you just say?” he asked cautiously, like he was approaching a timid animal who would spook at the slightest harsh movement.  
“That you should call the magician girl Garland.” She replied a touch nervously. “That’s what I call the girl I see in my dreams, and she’s got red hair too.” She’d not spoken of her dreams to anyone before. Her dream girl, Garland was someone she felt really possessive of -to be shared with no one. Yet here she was spilling it all out to Timon like she could make him understand by speaking faster and faster, and in return he told her Garland’s tale. If she hadn’t been dreaming her for all her life, she wouldn’t have believed him, but Timon wasn’t the type to make things up, and when he spoke about the Fantasia, he looked like Eden had when he’d introduced Hester to their parents; like he was desperately in love and wanted them to love her too.

From then on it was a secret between the two of them. Jewel spent more and more time over at her eldest brother’s house, listening to a story so fantastical, it scared her. The idea of people getting turned into lizards, let alone _her Timon_ was the stuff of nightmares. She, for her part wrote down all the dreams of Garland that she could remember, handing them to Timon who treated them like precious artifacts, staring at the words like he could drink them in and bring them to life in front of him. She knew her older brothers had always been odd, but now she knew why, anyone would be odd if they had two lives worth of stuff in their head.

* * *

 

It wasn’t until she arrived as Eden and he were having a blazing row that she found out Timon hadn’t told her everything.

“She thinks it was just you and I Eden, but she’s been dreaming about Garland since she can remember dreaming! What’s the harm?” he muttered. They hadn’t seen her as she was lurking in the doorway, but she could see them both.

Eden looked pained. “Can’t you let it go? Let her go, Timon this isn’t healthy, she’s gone. You’re just hurting yourself with all this. What will you do if all this helps Jewel finally remember? What will you do if this is the way she makes it back there and collects us? I know what you want Timon, and encouraging Jewel down this path means that she definitely will bring use her magic and meet Garland and bring us back. I know you’ve regretted that ever since, but it’s a-“

“-Fixed point, yeah yeah I know, I wrote the book after all, didn’t I? It’s just so… I found the library again after all these years…. I always told her I would find her, but so far I’ve only found her grandmother’s resting place.” He gave a humorless laugh and something in Jewel’s heart broke from the sound.  
  
She found the diary again the next day. Garland’s diary. Jewel skipped all of her classes to read it from cover to cover and it only cemented her will to help Garland and her brothers along the path they had once tread. She carried on learning more from Timon; now knowing he was carefully editing the truth to censor her own involvement (as both a baby and the silver girl) in it all. She almost wanted to resent him for it, but… she found that she couldn’t. She wondered if this was what growing up felt like.  
So the only thing that really changed was that she asked her parents to sign her up for extra classes in parametis, her hope was that the more she knew about how her powers worked, the easier it would be to be the silver girl, and then actually travel back into the past and _meet_ Garland. Even if it would take years to perfect the method, she was almost vibrating with excitement from the thought.

* * *

 Learning about astral projection was boring up until the very moment she did it for the first time. Coming to with a gasp, she recounted the second she’d seen fiery hair. She just _knew_ that was Garland she’d seen before her astral self had been wrenched back into her physical form. She half-listened to her tutor as he droned on about ‘centering the self’ and ‘the flight of the soul’ but her mind was already formulating how quickly she could make it happen again. The meditation was easy; one of her friends had been dragging her to yoga classes for months but it there was something- something that was blocking the way through. Stopping her from being able to get more than glances at her fantasia girl. 

She managed to get herself there three more times that week, all with the same result, which convinced her. But she wasn’t the daughter of geniuses for nothing, and with her big brothers being such great examples; she set to researching, keeping her own diary that detailed everything she could see through the slight misty haze, and making a copy of Garland’s diary to cross-reference.

Repetition proved to be the key to success, -or at the very least, more information. She estimated the Garland she could see in her split second viewings was no older than twelve, long before the solar converter had started fading, or the road rats had attacked the Fantasia. She was starting to get the hang of projecting herself through time and space, and soon began to experiment. It wasn’t long before she could somewhat control her path through the ‘mental aether’ –and it was lucky by this point she knew the events in Garland’s diary backwards, because the first time, she landed herself slap bang in the middle of the debacle that was Gramth.  
Her brothers knew she was up to something -more so than their parents did- but she didn’t care. She was busy flexing her new ability and reaching for every single one of the time periods Garland had written that the silver girl appeared. It had been Timon’s book on Time Travel that had given her the final clue; it was all to do with paradoxes. For Jewel to be where she was and to have survived as a baby, she had to have helped Garland through as the silver girl. Which meant that from the point of view of past her, she had already _been_ the silver girl, and thus the channels to those particular points in time were already open for her to use to assure time went as it should.

* * *

 

She knew what she had to do.  
She was just waiting for the right moment.  
The day she chose was just after Timon published his book on the Fantasia; he had this look on his face that their ghosts were haunting him more than usual, which was more than enough to convince her it was time.  
 

The first time Jewel managed a full astral projection into Garland’s timeline was twenty years after the events that had brought her brothers there.  
Garland looked up from practicing her routine and cried out in shock.  
“Silver girl! –I mean Jewel! What are you doing here?”  
Jewel just laughed in pure delight. “I did it! Oh Garland, I’ve looked forward to meeting you for so long. So very long. Hello!”  
Garland looked at her oddly. “You’re… younger than you were last time.”  
Jewel nodded, still giddy with her success. “This is the first time I’ve managed to fully get myself over here. Time’s a tricky thing to play around with, but the last time you saw me is actually the very last time I’ll see you, as it’s the moment I take Eden and Timon back to when I was a baby and start growing up again…” she grinned again “paradoxes are wonderful things don’t you think?”

“So what are you doing here? Why now?” Garland looked confused, and a little bit sad at the mention of Timon’s name, which only cemented the knowledge that Jewel was doing the right thing.  
“Weeeeeellll,” she scuffed her toe in the dirt (proper actual dirt! How cool was that?) “I was wondering………”  
“Wondering what?”

“Jewel grinned, all teeth. “Wondering if you’d like to come see the future.”  
The red-head’s sharp intake of breath was practically a resounding yes, and Jewel couldn’t help but laugh again, already imagining Timon’s face when she arrived back in a flutter of lights, with Garland in tow. It would be the best thing she'd ever done, if just for the way he'd smile.  
_Yes,_ she thought with vicious satisfaction. This was how it was always supposed to go.


End file.
